Dual hard drives for a Dell Optiplex 330

[chienetfou]

I have two bootable HDDs in the Dell one is a 250 GB XP and the other is a 500 GB W7. Only one is recognized as bootable at start, the one in the master position. Doesn't matter which one is there it's the one that gets recognized. How do I get the machine to recognize both HDDs and ask which one I want to boot?

 

[hang-the-9]

You either need to create a boot menu or use the boot selection key when the system starts to pick what device you boot from. One of the F keys, which one depends on your computer. If you want to make a boot menu you can use the BCDEdit utility https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667(v=ws.10).aspx to create one. It may be simpler to just hit an F key and select which drive is the boot one though.

 

[chienetfou]

You either need to create a boot menu or use the boot selection key when the system starts to pick what device you boot from. One of the F keys, which one depends on your computer. If you want to make a boot menu you can use the BCDEdit utility https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667(v=ws.10).aspx to create one. It may be simpler to just hit an F key and select which drive is the boot one though.

 

[chienetfou]

hang-the-9:
When I boot the machine I get the Dell screen with the F2 and F12 options, then the screen goes black and I get the message that one of the disks wasn't found and that I need to push F1 to continue or F8? to run diagnostics. Hitting F1 allows whatever HDD is currently set as Disk 0 to boot. It doesn't seem to recognize Disk1 as boot-able. Some research leads my to lean towards a Bios update, but not certain.

 

[chienetfou]

hang-the-9:
I successfully updated the Bios from A03 to A11, and changed the SATA operations configuration from the default AHCI to SATA. The machine still doesn't give me a boot option at start; It is still only recognizing the master (disk 0) as the only bootable drive.
Any thoughts on where to go from here?

 

[hang-the-9]

hang-the-9:
I successfully updated the Bios from A03 to A11, and changed the SATA operations configuration from the default AHCI to SATA. The machine still doesn't give me a boot option at start; It is still only recognizing the master (disk 0) as the only bootable drive.
Any thoughts on where to go from here?

Are you actually hitting the boot selection key and telling the system to boot from that specific disk? If you want to setup a true dual boot, you need to install XP, then install Windows 7 without touching the XP setup, that should give you a proper dual boot menu. If you just had one disk with XP, then removed that and installed Windows 7 on another disk, you will not have dual boot.

 

[chienetfou]

Before trying EasyBCD I tried unplugging the drives and plugging them back in one at time.Lo and Behold! I have the DOS type screen that asks which OS do I want to boot. Both disks boot just dandy. Still scratching my head over this one. :}